It was all Nick.
There’s been a lot of speculation since October over who actually made the decision to strip Sean Desai of his defensive coordinator responsibilities and hand them over to Matt Patricia three-quarters of the way through the season.
Was it Jeff Lurie? Was it Howie Roseman? Was it Nick Sirianni?
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It was a decision that had disastrous consequences, as the Eagles’ defense went from disappointing under Desai to catastrophic under Patricia. And if it indeed was a decision made at the front office level, that would shift a little of the blame for the 1-6 finish away from Sirianni.
On Wednesday, Sirianni and Roseman both indicated that it was solely Sirianni’s call in mid-December to strip Desai of play calling duties and give them to Patricia, who had joined the team in April.
“Coach comes to me and tells me what he's thinking,” Roseman said. “No different than when he decided to give Shane (Steichen) the play-calling duties, and he said, ‘Hey, this is what I'm going to do.’
“I trust him with the coaching staff. That's his responsibility, just like he trusts me with my front office staff. That's how we're structured here. That's how the relationship works.
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“I always want to be supportive for him and a resource if he needs me to do something, if he asks me a question, if he asks me an opinion in a situation like this. He had made up his mind, he had made the decision, and I'm going to support him.”
As late as Week 11, the Eagles were 12th in the NFL in yards allowed and 14th in points allowed. Not elite but certainly not disastrous.
That’s when things began falling apart. The Eagles beat the Bills, then lost lopsided games vs. the 49ers and Cowboys, allowing 109 points in those three games - the 3rd-most points the Eagles have allowed in a three-game span in the last 50 years.
The Eagles were sitting at 10-3 at the point Patricia replaced Desai, but under Patricia, things got exponentially worse, and now both Desai and Patricia have been let go. Sirianni is still here, and he won’t say he regrets the decision as he searches for his fourth defensive coordinator in four years.
“At the time I made that decision … I made that decision because I thought it was the best decision for the team,” Sirianni said. “Obviously we all fell short at the end, at those last six weeks of the season. All of us did.
“I'll say, obviously, Matt was in a tough situation trying to -- because you can't completely change the defense, so he was trying to make some things happen with, quite frankly, things that weren't his defense.
“I know I put Matt in a tough spot, and I know I put Sean in a tough spot, obviously. But at the time that I did that, I did it because I thought it was the best decision for the football team.”
When we look back at the 2023 season and how a team could start out 10-1 and finish 1-6, the first thing we’ll look at is the defensive coordinator switch.
There were a ton of contributing factors, but that was the biggest. The defense just didn't have a chance after that.
“Trust me, every time we do something like that and it doesn't work, I think to myself, ‘What was the best thing?’ and I can only come back to that answer to you right now, that - and forevermore - that at the time when I did it, I did it because I thought it was the best thing for the defense," Sirianni said.
“Yeah, obviously I understand that anything that I do, any decision that I make, if it doesn't work out, you can look at it and second-guess it. We are where we are right now.”